Every once in a while, a revolutionary and game-changing approach to dealing with a challenge arrives that is as innovative as it is effective.

We believe Garrison Technology’s approach to using the Internet – without the connection itself being used to infiltrate the network – is unique and quite possibly disruptive to the cyber-security protection market.

Perhaps we should add some context…

For many years we have provided the security layers that are now considered standard in an organisation that considers itself to have a mature security posture.

When Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) were new and considered the next best thing in advanced security, we were among the early ones introducing them to the market and helping many customers to realise the benefit of using them. Then attackers became more sophisticated, and it seemed overnight, the IPS market went full commodity.

For us, the Garrison SAVI® Platform is the next big thing in cyber-security protection, but with a very compelling difference: future-proofing through simplicity.

Sure, you’ve heard similar statements from others, and no doubt the phone often rings with sounds of “You need to take a look at this.”

As a Value-Added Reseller and Integrator of security solutions, we at Phoenix Datacom receive similar approaches from new vendors all the time. But the Garrison Technology is as simple as it is clever – and quite arguably – a simple approach that lets you safely interact with the malware-ridden parts of the Internet is needed now more than at any previous point in time.

But how?

Due to its genuine simplicity, we don’t have to precede this bit with “Put simply”, or “Broken down in to simple terms.” Garrison SAVI is a secure remote browsing platform that uses hardware enforcement to physically isolate a user from their web browsing experience. The core component is something called a SAVI node which is two ARM chips working as a pair and are automatically assigned to a user when they wish to use the Internet.

ARM Chip 1 runs the web browser and is connected to the risky internet and renders all the dodgy internet contact into safe raw bitmaps in real-time. ARM Chip 2 effectively watches what the first ARM chip is doing and compresses the safe video stream of the browsing experience and sends this to the end user.

It doesn’t matter if ARM Chip 1 visits a malware-infected site and is thoroughly compromised by every piece of malware known and unknown to man, because there is no direct connection to the end user. The attacker has no access to the end user device or any other sensitive systems or data. The same principle works when a user clicks an email link sending them to a malware-infested site.

As far as the:

User is concerned, they are using the Internet and their native browsing and Quality of Experience are unchanged

Security Team is concerned, the number of threats entering the network is hugely reduced, and far fewer false positives provides more time to concentrate on core areas

The C-Level members of the organisation are concerned… insert here the line about avoiding “accidental & damaging breaches costing money and significant harm to brand reputation.”

What now?

As cyber-criminals become more sophisticated and approaches to dealing with threats are becoming more and more complex, we think now is the right time for clever simplicity. Let’s stop trying to filter or monitor our way out of the problem. We already know that that isn’t the full answer. Instead, let’s fully isolate ourselves from potentially harmful content and enable our users to do what they need to do to be truly effective.

To answer our headline question, we partnered with Garrison Technology because we believe doing so means we can continue to bring real value and advantage to our customers, but in a way that is simple, secure and scalable, and easy-to-install.

The quick salesy bit

Garrison Technology SAVI is so secure that it is being evaluated by NCSC for use at very high levels of government classification, which is significant as Garrison is engineered specifically for large scale commercial deployment.

As Garrison’s partner for the UK, we can show you the SAVI platform in action and integrate the solution to your environment. You can even see it in action in our multi-million pound Cyberlab.